The Instant When Everything is Perfect

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  By the time of her follow up appointment, a little over a week after the surgery, Sally sits straight on the examination table, her shoulders held back.

  “Are you getting around at home okay?” Dr. Jacobs asks.

  Sally nods. “Mia’s been there with me since the operation.”

  Mia looks at the doctor and smiles, and Dr. Jacobs reaches over and pats Mia’s knee. “I bet you feel like running away from home about now.”

  Though Sally feels a tiny ripple of loss run through her body, she barks out a laugh, the sound harsh and different and almost scary. Both the doctor and Mia look at her, and then smile, seeing that the sound—though unexpected—is happy.

  “She left at seventeen, and I know she didn’t plan on coming back,” Sally says. “But I don’t know what I would have done without her.”

  Dr. Jacobs nods, and Sally wonders if she can tell her about the gun. Maybe this is a normal reaction, women all over the world craving steel and power and forgetfulness just after the surgery that takes their breasts. Perhaps this is information for a medical journal, and the very idea seems distant to Sally, as if it wasn’t just a week ago that she wanted to smatter her brains over a wall. Maybe I’ll tell Mia later, she thinks. Maybe one day she will write about it.

  Doctor Jacobs places her fingers gently on Sally’s neck and upper chest, feeling for what? Sally can’t remember now what she should be scared about. Something about her lymph nodes? Swelling? Watching the wall as the doctor’s hands move patiently along her body, Sally knows that she is done. Finished. It’s time to start fresh.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Sally blurts out.

  “About what?”

  “About reconstruction. I don’t want it. Not now, not ever.”

  Mia uncrosses her legs and leans her elbows on her knees. “Mom? When did you decide this?”

  “Today. I don’t want to go through that. All that stretching and filling of saline and the like.”

  Sally looks down at Dr. Jacobs, who blinks, bites her lip, nods. “I did a skin saving mastectomy.”

  “I know.”

  “You will most likely want me to go in eventually and reduce the amount of skin. Smooth out your chest.”

  Sally feels the doctor’s words rush along her bare arms. But she knows she’s already lost the most important parts, and a little skin removal is nothing. Not one thing. Maybe she won’t even have it removed. But if she does, she’ll be as smooth and free as an eight-year-old girl.

  “Of course. After the chemo, right?”

  Dr. Jacobs writes in the chart. “Right. I’ll confer with your oncologist, Dr. Gupta. And I’ll let Dr. Groszmann know as well.”

  Sally plucks at the ties on her gown and then smoothes the fabric over her thighs. “Thank you, doctor. I’m sorry I waited so long to decide.”

  Dr. Jacobs stands and smiles, setting down the chart and putting on a pair of latex gloves. “Better you decided now than after you got the implants. So, let’s see how your incisions are doing.”

  Sally opens her gown, noticing, as she does, that Mia isn’t looking at her but at the diagram on the wall with the woman with one breast, her mastectomy scar like a wicked wink, a one sided smile, a half a kiss on her perfect chest.

  “Mia?” Sally says, and Mia looks up, her face not that of the forty-two-year-old woman she is, but that of the girl Sally remembers at David’s funeral, the one begging her mother to tell her, “What will happen next, Mom. What are we going to do?”

  Then as now, Sally has no answer. No information that would have prepared them for the lives they’ve all led since then, Mia, Katherine, Dahlia, and Sally. No words could have foretold any of it.

  We have to live through it, she wants to say now, understanding, finally, that these words are true. But she has no voice for them, can feel nothing but Dr. Jacobs’s stethoscope on her chest, the cold metal against her wounded skin.

  Seven

  Mia

  For the first day in over a week and a half, Mia is alone. Sally is at home, Nydia Nuñez sitting with her until three, when Dick Brantley will come over with Mitzie. He promised Mia that he would make Sally walk down her front path and then up and down the street once, maybe twice.

  The strange thing is that Sally agreed to the arrangement, not arguing as Mia expected she would.

  “Sure,” she said. “Dick and Mitzie and I will tear up the street. I’ve just got to remember not to swing my arms.”

  Since Dr. Jacobs removed the drainage tubes, Sally has felt a little sore, tender at her incisions, scared to move too fast for too long. But she wanted the walk, wanted Nydia and Dick, wanted Mia to go home.

  “I’ll come over at six with dinner,” Mia promised.

  “I don’t need a thing,” Sally said.

  “Mom, I’ll be there later.” And then she left Sally’s condo, feeling as though she could breathe for the first time in weeks.

  Now she sits at her desk at home, her computer screen open to her latest novel, a story she doesn’t know how to write any more. Before Sally’s diagnosis, Mia had loved this plot, one about two sisters who basically raise themselves after their father’s death. It’s set in the seventies, and Mia researched all the music and clothes and movies, laughing as she remembered all their terrible haircuts and huge bell-bottom pants.

  But since Sally’s call, her “I have some bad news,” Mia hasn’t known how to be in the seventies anymore. She doesn’t want to be there at all, close to the time when David died. Even though the story is not about her and Katherine and Dahlia, she doesn’t want to remember what is was like in that house. What she wants is here, now, in the new millennium.

  After the night she kissed Robert Groszmann on the cheek, she went home and lay down in bed next to Ford, watching his smooth back all night. He breathed slowly, up and down, his rhythm, all his rhythms, so familiar, so known, so calming. She pressed up next to him, and promised him silently that she would never talk with Robert Groszmann again. She wouldn’t look for him or email him or talk to him. She would forget how he looked at her as they sat across from each other at the cafeteria table. She would ignore the way her body wanted his. It was over, over, over. It was over before she had more to feel guilty about.

  She softly stroked Ford’s shoulder and vowed to ask him again to go to counseling, even if he would get angry life before and say, “We don’t need it. We’re fine.”

  She’d ask again, bring up the sex, knowing that he’d say, “It’s not my fault.”

  That night she promised to do all these things, and she’s kept most of the promise.

  She asked Ford to pick up Sally and bring her back to the condo, telling him she needed to set up the sickroom. Instead of calling Robert and asking him to prescribe an anti-depressant, she called Dr. Jacobs, who arranged for the drugs to be delivered to Sally’s house.

  Mia’s avoided her email entirely, even though she knows that she is probably missing messages from her agent, editors, colleagues, and friends. But she doesn’t care. If it’s important enough, they will call. Later, after a long while, she will open her email and delete all the messages without looking at them, never knowing if he wrote back or not. And because Sally has decided not to have reconstruction, there will never be any excuse to have to see Robert Groszmann again. Not one. Not ever.

  And tonight? Tonight she'll bring up the counseling. Tonight, she’ll do it.

  But now she can’t write. She turns to look outside her window and watches the goldfinches fighting over their positioning on the thistle seed bag she bought at Orchard Nursery. Birds seem to fight constantly, each seed a victory. She’s been staring at the bag for so long, she can recognize the finch that usually wins the fight, a scruffy female, her olive colored wings a bit ruffled from scuffles. But there she is, time after time, right in the middle of the bag on the thickest bulge of seed.

  If she’s not watching the birds, she’s watching the squirrels eat the discarded bits off the ground below. If not the squirrel
s, it’s her cats sitting on the fence. One writer she read about taped his office windows dark with paper and then wore a blindfold while writing, so all he would concentrate on were his words. The idea of that makes Mia want to bolt outside. She needs to see. She needs to breathe.

  But she can’t breathe anywhere right now. If she tries, she takes in Robert, the smell of his cheek, the taste of his skin on her lips. When she closes her eyes, she sees him pushing his hair back from his forehead, smoothing his perfect long ponytail. As she stares at her month-old words on the screen, she hears his voice, hears him say, “I’m drawn to you.”

  What would Kenzie do? Mia wonders, wishing she could talk to her best friend about this. She could, really. Of course she could. Kenzie knows more about men than anyone Mia has ever known, telling Mia hundreds of date stories over the years. Sex stories. Penis stories. Sad lonely night stories. But for some reason, Mia’s holding this secret tight. But why? It’s over with Robert, isn’t it? Hasn’t she decided to stop? Didn’t she promise everything to Ford’s quiet, sleeping body?

  Mia stands up and walks to the window. The goldfinches fly away, the thistle bag swinging from their tiny legs pushing off into flight. A squirrel starts, looks around, and then bends back to the seed.

  There’s so much Mia needs to do. It’s enormous. Overwhelming. She has to figure out her marriage. She needs to lose weight, work out more, and take up yoga. And then there’s her mother. Where to start with that? How to begin with Sally? But for today, Mia needs to make a batch of chili, clean the bathrooms, and pay some bills. First—first she’s going to check her email. She has to. She knows now where Lucien inherited his addictive personality. She can’t even go more than a week and a half.

  She’s going to write to Robert.

  When she reads his last words, “I have killed someone,” Mia wants to weep. He admitted this, wrote this, said this, typed this, thought this, and she didn’t answer him for ten days. Now he must think she read the sentence and decided that he was bad, evil, wrong. He’s been walking around for a week feeling judged. He probably wishes he’d never met Mia at all.

  And like her, he probably has stopped looking at his email, knowing that it would do no good. Her decision was in. He’d waited long enough. It was over.

  Mia swallows, rests her head in her hand for a moment, and then starts to write.

  Dear Robert,

  I could lie to you and say that I’ve been so busy with my mom that I haven’t had time to write, but even though I have been busy, I’d still be lying. And because you’ve been so truthful, I have to be. I was scared. I came home from the hospital that night, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t write to you or see you again. And then when my mother decided that she wasn’t going to have reconstruction, I knew that it was a sign. We weren’t supposed to see each other.

  But I think about you. This morning, I thought about you. Last night. The day before. The day before that.

  Can we meet? Can we talk about what you wrote in your email? I want to know. I don’t want to write any more about this. I want to see you in person.

  But I’ll understand if you don’t want to see me. I must seem indecisive. A flake. It’s your decision.

  Mia

  

  As she browns the hamburger for the chili, she thinks about Robert, imagining him at his desk, reading the emails she sent him. She chops the garlic, onions, and bell pepper and talks to Harper about his geometry homework, thinking of Robert pushing his hair back from his face, thinking how to answer her. She thinks of him writing the story of how he killed someone. Killed someone? All afternoon, Mia is in two places or there are two Mias. One Mia is in the kitchen, one Mia is floating in Robert’s office, imagining him.

  How can she be this split person, neither one place nor the other? She should be here, at home, with her family.

  “Mom?” Harper asks, holding out a piece of paper.

  “What?

  “Permission slip? The thing we were just talking about?” Harper stares at her, his eyes dark like Ford’s, like Sally’s.

  Mia puts the lid on the chili pot and takes the slip, reading it. “Where are you going?”

  Her son shakes his head and goes back to sit at the table. He sighs, rubs his forehead, just like Ford does. “Monterey. The aquarium. What is going on with you and Dad? Is it Grandma still?”

  Mia grabs a pen from the wire mesh basket on the counter and signs her name on the slip and then hands it back to Harper. “What do you mean?”

  Harper shoves the slip in his backpack. “You’re both on some other planet. Pluto, even if it really isn’t technically a planet anymore. Just some giant rock floating around the sun.”

  Mia puts her hand on her hip, staring at her youngest boy. What is he seeing? Is it just her fatigue from taking care of Sally? Or has her betrayal of his father seeped through her skin like whiskey? But Ford? He’s who he’s become in their long marriage. Helpful, thoughtful, kind, slightly detached. Mia doesn’t know what Harper is talking about. Ford seems fine, happy to help out with Sally, content with being alone all those nights Mia stayed at the condo. Unwilling to go to therapy, but okay with the same day-in and day-out of their lives.

  Mia puts the hot pads back in the drawer, opens the chili pot to look in, and then closes it. “It’s been a hard time. Grandma’s better now, though, and she’ll be able to drive tomorrow. I won’t have to keep going over there.”

  Harper zips his backpack, tightening its straps. “You know that book you wrote?”

  “Which one?”

  “The second. The train one.”

  Mia nods. Of all the people in her family, only Lucien has read her novels, talking with her about each one, every character, the covers, the titles. Ford and Harper and Sally and Dahlia are proud—Dahlia as well as Sally buying them in batches—but Mia knows that her family doesn’t really read them or they don’t read them past the first chapters. When people ask her if she’s ever had to worry about using her own life sometimes as material, she honestly answers, “No,” clear that only one son would find the real intermixed with fiction.

  “And?” she asks Harper. “What about it?”

  “You know Rafael?”

  “You read the book?” Mia pulls out a chair and sits down at the table, staring at Harper. Even though she knows he has something important to say, she can only think of the boy in second grade who had trouble with Green Eggs and Ham. For most of his reports now, he skims books and reads up on what he missed on sparknotes.com. If he were younger or not trying to be serious, she’d stand up and hug him tight, proud that he got through her whole story.

  But then she sighs, knowing that he could only have done so because he was worried.

  “Most of it. Anyway, you know Rafael? The guy?”

  Mia used to know Rafael. For years, he lived in her fingers and arms and brain and heart. But now, like the rest of the story, she’s let him go, off into the death of characters with no sequels to revive them. What he loved and hated and cared about has become exactly what Rafael and Sacramento by Train is: an old story.

  “Of course. What is it, Harper?”

  “You know what he did. With his secretary.”

  Something pings in her chest, her breath stops. How can Harper know about her and Robert already? How can she be guilty when she hasn’t even had the opportunity to sin? To enjoy the sin. How can she pay for it now without having the joy of the crime?

  “Yes. He had an affair,” she says, her eyes steady.

  “Well,” Harper says. “It happens, right? In real life. And then people go on. Like Rafael and Susan.”

  Mia leans forward, feeling her thighs press against the wooden chair. “What are you saying, Harper?”

  Maybe it was the question or her forward movement or the fact that he had only five minutes to get to his math tutor, but whatever the reason, Harper stands up and swings his backpack onto his shoulder. “I’m just talking about it, that’s all.”

  He
walks around the table, hesitates, and then kisses her on the forehead. “It was a good book.”

  She holds his shoulder, feels the hard muscle there, and then puts a hand to his head. He allows her touch and then slowly pulls away.

  “Harper.” Mia pivots in the chair to watch him walk toward the front door.

  “What?” He turns, his eyes narrowed. Then he looks at his watch. “I’ve got to go.”